Margherita Zenoni

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Margherita Zenoni
Bornc.1815 or c.1827
Turin, Italy
Died(1878-03-31)31 March 1878
Turin, Italy
Other names
  • Margherita Zenoni-Gamboa
  • Margherita Zenoni-Occhiena
OccupationOpera singer (soprano)

Margherita Zenoni (c.1815 or c.1827[a] – 31 March 1878) was an Italian opera singer who sang leading soprano roles in the opera houses of Italy and abroad from the early 1850s. She left Europe in 1867, first to sing with Annibale Biacchi's Italian opera company in Cuba and then to tour with Augusto Cagli's Italian opera company in Australasia. She remained with Cagli's company in its various incarnations until 1877, singing in India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. She died in Turin, her native city, less than a year after her return from South Africa.[3]

Life and career

Zenoni was born in Turin. She was initially self-taught and began her career in the late 1840s singing secondary roles in small theatres. Unable to make a breakthrough but possessed of a promising voice and stage presence, she was encouraged by music critics to get formal training. She became a pupil of Marcelliano Marcello who had opened a singing school in Turin and went on to further training with Carlo Boniforti at the Milan Conservatory.[4] She made rapid progress and by the early 1850s was signed to various northern Italian opera houses as the prima donna assoluta. She had a triumphant debut at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1854 in the title role of Donizetti's Gemma di Vergy.[5] Later in her career she also sang the title role in his La Favorita. She went on to sing many leading roles in Verdi's operas, including some of the earliest performances his La traviata (as Violetta), Rigoletto (as Gilda) and Il trovatore (as Leonora). She also appeared in Verdi's I masnadieri (as Amalia), Nabucco (as Abigaille), Macbeth (as Lady Macbeth), Attila (as Odabella), Ballo in Maschera (as Amelia), and I due Foscari (as Lucrezia).[6]

Francesco Regli wrote of her in 1860:

Wherever she sings she has shown herself to be an artist worthy of every praise, for she unites an exquisite sentiment, an ardent spirit and a dramatic talent that has few equals with a beautiful and charming voice. Margherita Zenoni is not only an impeccable singer. She is also an excellent actress.[4][b]

According to Italian press articles on her benefit performances in several northern Italian opera houses, they were lavish affairs.[c] An account of her benefit night in 1857 at the Teatro Sociale in Rovereto described the audience screaming wildly and throwing flowers; garlands of roses, laurel, and carnations; gold coins; and poems in her honour onto the stage at the end of the performance. A large cornucopia filled with ribbons and flowers was brought onto the stage as well as a silk banner carried by an angel. She was then escorted to her lodgings by a torch-light parade composed of still-cheering audience members and the city's orchestra and chorus who proceeded to serenade her under her window.[9]

Although Zenoni's career up to 1867 was primarily concentrated in the opera houses of northern Italy, she also sang in southern Italy at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and the Teatro Piccinni in Bari and appeared abroad with touring Italian opera companies in Bucharest, Constantinople, Valencia, and Oviedo. In a gala performance at the Teatro del Fontán in Oviedo in 1864, she sang Abigaille in Nabucco opposite Giorgio Ronconi who had created the title role at its world premiere in 1842.[10][6][11]

In December 1867 Zenoni sailed to New York and then on to Havana, Cuba were she appeared at the Teatro Tacón with an Italian opera troupe organized by Annibale Biacchi. After Havana she proceeded to India to join the Augusto Cagli's Italian opera company.[12][13]

Notes

  1. ^ The Ricordi archives give Zenoni's birth year as 1815.[1] However, her 1878 death announcement in the Otago Daily Times gave her age as 51,[2] making her birth year c.1827. That date is more congruent with images of her in the early 1850s.
  2. ^ Original Italian: "In ogni luogo mostrò di essere un'artista degna di ogni encomio, poichè riunisce ad una bella e simpatica voce, educata alla pura scuola, uno squisito sentimento, un'anima ardente ed un valore drammatico a poche secondo. Margherita Zenoni, se è inappuntabile cantante, è un' attrice eziandio eccellente."
  3. ^ Benefit performances, where one of the opera's singers or its composer received the box-office takings for a particular performance in addition to their salary, were a common practice in the 18th and 19th century opera world as was the presentation of gifts from the audience to the singer.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ Archivio Storico Ricordi. "Margherita Zenoni Occhiena". Retrieved 30 June 2019 (in Italian).
  2. ^ s.n. (6 July 1878). "Melbourne Gossip". Otago Daily Times, p. 6. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  3. ^ Hale, Frederick (July 2016). "From a comedy of errors to tragedy: the cessation of Italian opera in Cape Town in 1877". South African Journal of Cultural History, Vol. 30, No. 1, p. 113. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
  4. ^ a b Regli, Francesco (1860). "Zenoni, Margeherita". Dizionario biografico dei più celebri poeti ed artisti melodrammatici, tragici e comici, maestri, concertisti, coreografi, mimi, ballerini, scenografi, giornalisti, impresarii, ecc. ecc. che fiorirono in Italia dal 1800 al 1860, pp. 575–576. E. Dalmazzo (in Italian)
  5. ^ Saredo, M. G. (5 September 1854). "Corriere di Torino". Lo Scaramuccia, Anno I, No. 89, p. 363. (in Italian)
  6. ^ a b Kutsch, Karl-Josef and Riemens, Leo (2012). "Zenoni, Margherita". Großes Sängerlexikon (4th edition), pp. 5154–5155. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 359844088X (in German)
  7. ^ Price, Curtis; Milhous, Judith; Hume, Robert (1995). Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-century London: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791, Chapter 3, Part II, "Recruitment and Salaries". Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198161662
  8. ^ Rosselli, John (1995). Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession, pp. 82–85. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521426979
  9. ^ s.n. (20 November 1857). "Polemica". L'Eco di Fiume, Anno I, No. 59, p. 248 (in Italian)
  10. ^ Conati, Marcello (31 January 1982). "A Chronology of the First performances of Rigoletto". Bollettino Verdi, Vol. 3, no. 9, p. 1874. EDT.
  11. ^ Fonseca, María Sanhuesa (2010). "El Teatro del Fontán de Oviedo", p. 64. VII Ciclo de Conferencias de la SOF. León Everest. ISBN 9788444102634 Retrieved 30 June 2019. (in Spanish)
  12. ^ s.n. (3 April 1868). "Dur und Moll". Signale für die musikalische Welt, No. 22, p. 414 (in German)
  13. ^ Rocha, Esmeralda Monique Antonia (2012). Imperial Opera: The nexus between opera and imperialism in Victorian Calcutta and Melbourne, 1833–1901. PhD dissertation. University of Western Australia. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
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